Shadow of the Quiet Man: Roy and the Cheshire Cat Smile
by JA Ingram
Summary: A part of The Starling Mysteries Universe. A one-shot of an 'off-screen' moment where the Team discovers what Roy got up to with Cheshire in the Lair. Related to the story Still Waters and Quiet Men; A Starling Mystery but it is not necessary to have read it in order to follow along.


Shadow of the Quiet Man; Roy and the Cheshire Cat Smile

A Starling Mysteries Supplemental

By JA Ingram

Felicity plopped down in front of her workstation and took a moment to savor the aroma of dark roasted coffee beans and love coming off her Vente Caffé Latte with steamed whole milk (because fuck skim) and six espresso shots.

Six shots might seem extreme to some but this was just the first of many, many more cups to come. Actually, it wasn't even her first cup of coffee, more like her twentieth, but it was her first coffee post power nap so it counted as her afternoon breakfast. She already had a Vente Pumpkin Spice Latte with extra whipped cream (in celebration of the fact that Thanksgiving was just around the corner) put aside as dessert as soon as she finished drinking this particular bad boy in zero to sixty seconds flat.

It had been four months since the 'Thing' (with a capital 'T') and she still wasn't really sleeping well. She was sleeping 'some', just not 'well', and rarely without nightmares. She now had a system for dealing with it though. She went to bed at home the second the sun began to creep over the horizon and napped until she had to get up for work. She would take her shower and do most of her make up before lying down in her underwear so all she had to do was basically hop out of bed and toss on some clothes then brush her bedhead into something resembling a ponytail. After that, she stopped by the coffee place drive-thru closest to QC where, if she was lucky, her normal guy was at the window already waiting with her regular order. After that, she ran into the office with no less than three cups of heaven (since she'd already had her first cup on the ride over) and was usually down to two cups by the time she got off the elevator. She always reluctantly handed one cup to Dig before pretending to enjoy her own 'first' cup of the day at her desk.

After that she had to stretch out her coffee and soda consumption as to not attract comments. The advent of Water Joe and Avitae are what really sold it.

Caffeinated water. Brilliant. Best damn thing to come out for hackers since UNIX and Jolt Cola.

She usually made do with several bottles of her 'artesian spring water' (minus the label) throughout the morning before sending Oliver and Diggle to lunch, at which time she would set the alarm on her phone and power nap on Oliver's office couch for an hour, followed by another cup of coffee from Oliver's Rube Goldberg-looking brass coffeemaker.

She was not ashamed to say that, not only did she drink it out of a comically large mug, but she sometimes brewed it using the Water Joe for an extra kick. The first time she made the mistake of leaving some coffee in the pot after she did that though, Oliver and Dig were practically buzzing from caffeine jitters for the rest of the day, utterly convinced it was some sort of shared vigilante sixth sense coming into play.

Lightweights, she snorted to herself. Besides, she didn't make Oliver coffee; not because of the EA thing anymore, she was over that, but because he had been avoiding her as much as possible since the 'Thing' and it was really starting to tick her off. Not that he noticed; ever since Sara left again and Laurel was forced to enter rehab after her breakdown, all his time had been spent on the streets or training Thea and Roy.

At the end of the day she would head straight to the Lair with a brief stop at her other regular coffee place in the Glades where she would replenish by gulping first one coffee, then head inside with at least two more. Usually Oliver had some kind of business thing or whatever so they usually didn't meet up at the Lair until after dark which gave her time to take her third brief nap of the day on the couch in the foundry.

She stopped going to his work functions as his plus one after he and Laurel began dating again; it was easier that way. After the other woman left town, she continued to pretend not to notice when he was stuck going stag or would suggest he take Thea instead. Luckily for her, Oliver was equally eager to pretend not to notice.

On one hand, she really missed their partnership, but on the other hand she was stretched too thin as it was. All of them were still recovering from that night and no one was talking about it. It was just as well, she thought. If she felt like little more than just another tool in his arsenal before Slade returned a few months ago, these days she felt more like a ghost; a well-caffeinated yet perpetually tired and on-edge ghost. She learned a long time ago that sometimes invisible is better.

During the week, around seven or eight, the guys would walk in only to find her already seated at her workstation, usually with Thea or Roy handing her another latte. This, however, was a Saturday.

This was her favorite day of the week and her favorite time of day in the Lair. There was a ritual to her Saturday evenings. Usually she, Lance, and Dig would split up and she'd head for the Lair to again nap on the couch for an hour or two, sometimes more if they had to cancel firearms training for some reason. Really, the only place she felt safe enough to really sleep these days was in the Lair. She rarely had nightmares down there. In fact, if she could figure out a way to do it and get away with it, she'd just move in altogether. She didn't though, just like she didn't use Oliver's cot. She kept extra clothes and toiletries there but she never changed out of her work clothes even if it meant being more comfortable, nor did she allow herself the luxury of a pillow or blanket on the long leather couch.

It was a slippery slope and she knew it. She'd given in a couple of times and pretended to leave but stayed in the foundry instead. Before the guys came back after their injuries healed but after Thea moved back in with Oliver, she would slip over to the Lair to sleep. She even slept in Oliver's cot and wore her pajamas to bed a couple of times despite her vow not to. She stayed the entire weekend but when it came time to leave, she almost had a panic attack. She got through it but the next night when she fell asleep at her workstation she knew she had to go home because it was becoming way too easy to stay and, sooner or later, someone would start to notice that she no longer slept in her own bed anymore. Denial was the only weapon she had left in her personal arsenal. As long as she kept up the pretense of things being normal, no one said anything. She doubted Thea or Roy had even noticed, Lance noticed but he respected her space and the same with Dig, Oliver…

She sighed into her cup and allowed it to warm her icy cold fingers. Oliver knew, she could see it written all over his face as he silently kept track of every cup that made it into the trash, but he wasn't saying anything either.

No one was saying anything and, frankly, that suited her just fine.

Quickly draining her cup she turned in her chair and began the next stage of her Saturday afternoon ritual; the checking of the feeds.

Luckily she was so used to scrolling through all the feeds, inside and out, that it rarely took more than a few minutes. After all, she was in the Lair the majority of the time anyway but she'd learned from experience to always go through all the CCTV footage just in case. That was another gift Slade had given her besides night terrors; a healthy (or not so healthy) sense of paranoia.

She cued the footage and tossed the top of her coffee cup in the trash (the creamy mustache was half the fun) and began to watch their busy lives play out in a matter of minutes as she munched on the oversized bearclaw she bought at Lance's favorite doughnut place. That was part of the ritual, too; she always bought a couple dozen doughnuts to drop off at the station whenever she went over there to hang out with Lance at the gun range. Half the guys at the station thought she was Lance's midlife crisis while the other half figured she was his illegitimate daughter; no matter what they thought though, the minute she walked through the doors it was a pavlovian experiment of cops versus doughnuts. The first thing the desk sergeant always asked her was 'did you bring the ones with the sprinkles?' He was so used to her coming in with the big pink box he didn't even bother asking for her ID anymore; all he saw was 'Cruller Girl'. It was the closest thing she had to a handle of her own, but still, it could be worse.

Felicity turned her attention back to the feeds and yawned. She'd gotten used to most of the gross things her boys did when they thought they were alone, especially Roy; the scratching, the adjusting, the picking, the occasional expulsion of bodily gasses followed by comical fanning of the air, but it never ceased to amaze her that none of them ever questioned the fact that she knew everything and saw everything that went on in and around the foundry. Not once did any of them ever ask, 'Did you bug the Lair?' Instead, they just assumed that their jock itch spray and foot powder magically appeared in the bathroom when they started their surreptitious scratching, that the clothes they were giving the sniff test to the day before just magically got washed, or that the OJ and Oliver's favorite yogurt was always magically replenished in the mini-fridge before Roy could get busted for eating the last carton or drinking directly from the pitcher.

Usually the running of the feeds was a comedy of errors, occasionally it was like a really poorly executed porno which was quickly deleted, but every once in a while she caught something surprising. One minute she was fast forwarding through Roy working out on the Wing Chun dummy alone, and the next she was choking on her coffee as a lithe figure slipped through the foundry doors, blade in hand, and approached him from behind.

Her eyes were watering and she desperately struggled for breath even as her fingers closed around her phone to dial Dig. She watched in horror as Cheshire, the French assassin they'd been tracking ever since she tried to kill Thea, pressed her blade against Roy's spine.

/Hey Felicity, what's up?/

"R-roy!" She gasped, coughing and trying to clear her airway as she slowed the footage.

/Are you okay? What's going on?/ Dig asked, his voice deepening in concern.

She heard Oliver's voice in the background, /What's happening?/

"I'll brief you when you get here!" She said wheezing slightly. "Hurry up! You need to get to the foundry now!"

/We're on our way, less than a few minutes out,/ Oliver said over what she assumed was the speakerphone. /Are you okay?/

"I'm fine," she said shakily as she watched the fight break out on her monitors as Roy managed to disarm Cheshire and the two of them began a deadly dance of punches and kicks. "It's Roy! He's in trouble!"

/Why? What did I do?/

She froze, "Roy?"

/Yeah, what's going on? Why am I in trouble?/ He asked.

Felicity stared at her cell in confusion before looking back up at the monitor. Her eyes searched for the timestamp before realization dawned. The footage she was seeing was from last night after she and the other's had left.

/Felicity? Talk to me!/ Oliver's slightly panicked voice came over the speaker once more, /Damn it, Felicity! Answer me; what's going on?/

She hung up on him.

Her eyes narrowed on the screen and she hit a button, fast-forwarding through the footage. Sure enough, less than five minutes in, it was as though someone cued up the cheesy 70's porn music.

Bom chicka wah wah.

"Son of a bitch," she said flatly. "Cheshire? Really Roy? We've only been tracking that psycho bitch for the last two weeks and you decided that if you can't beat 'em, then sleep with 'em instead?" She said in disgust. "What is it with Team Arrow and bringing their Shadow Shags down into the freaking Lair?" She reached out to delete the footage before she wound up seeing more than she ever wanted to when her hand brushed against the cup of hot coffee she'd set haphazardly on her workstation causing it to spill all over her hand and the keyboard. She yelped in pain, her fingers hitting several keys and causing the footage to scroll forward at an even faster rate while she stumbled out of her chair to grab a few towels off the medical supply cart. She rushed back to frantically sop up the spilled coffee before it got into the electronics, ignoring both the feeds and the pain emanating from her scalded hand that was now a reddish pink, lifted her keyboard, and quickly placed a second towel underneath. As soon as the worst of the mess was up, her eyes darted back to the monitor.

Unfortunately.

Who knew Roy was that…

She tilted her head in order to get the full effect of the train wreck playing out in front of her.

Adventurous.

In the far distant corner of her mind not completely occupied with feelings of horror and disgust at seeing Roy's lily-white comically bouncing butt on screen as he moved the now very naked assassin (with the exception of her thigh high spiked boots and cat mask…which really had her wondering for the umpteenth time about men and high heels along with vigilantes and their tendency to be attracted to cat themed villains) from one surface to the other, she kept picturing Roy as Pepe LePew on speed as he tapped that pussy cat from one end of the room to the other. Shuddering, she quickly deleted the file but not before catching a glimpse of the last horizontal surface that they decided to grace with their combined DNA.

"On my workstation?!" She screeched, jumping back and rushing to the sink to wash her hands thoroughly, burn or no burn. As she scrubbed her hands a horrible thought occurred to her. "Oh fuck, I did put my bearclaw on a napkin, right? Oh my God! Oh my God!" She grabbed her toothbrush that she kept on a caddy by the sink and frantically began to brush her teeth, violently scrubbing her tongue until all she could taste was peppermint. "Oh my God!" She gagged as she chugged some Listerine and spat it out into the sink.

"Felicity!" She heard Oliver's voice shouting from the top of the stairs as he began to search the room, "Damn it, Felicity; answer me!"

She felt her stomach twist and she shuddered once again as she stared at her now slightly green features in the mirror.

Yeah, that was…that was the end of the bearclaws for a while.

"Felicity!"

"Maybe she's in the bathroom?" Diggle suggested.

"Oh man, what's with the mess all over the workstation?" Roy said pointedly. "She's usually so anal about keeping that thing clean."

As she heard all of their voices frantically call out for her, only one voice really caught her attention…along with his unfortunate, but apparently all too accurate, terminology in regards to her workstation.

She now knew more about Roy than she *ever* wanted to know.

She glanced down at the back of her hand and noticed the quickly forming blister between her thumb and forefinger and a slow burn began to form in her stomach, which quickly erupted into a full-blown volcano of rage.

See, the thing about long term insomnia when combined with copious amounts of caffeine was that it tended to affect one's emotions.

Negatively.

Growling deep in her throat she reached under the sink with jerky movements and grabbed the cleaner caddy along with a large roll of paper towels then stomped into the other room.

Oliver spun to face her with a darkening scowl, "Felicity! What the hell is going-?"

She slammed the plastic caddy onto the med table and glared at him, one finger held up in a gesture of silence. He blinked at her as all three men eyed her in a mixture of confusion and trepidation.

"Are you okay?" Dig asked her in a softer tone and his eyes caught sight of the now bright red burn on the back of her hand.

"No! No, I am not!" She snapped, locking eyes with each man in turn before speaking again. "New rule in the Lair; no more sex!"

"What?" Oliver asked incredulously.

"No more sex in the Lair! No more bringing your little girlfriends down here to play hide the escrima stick!" She spat out, noting how Roy jumped slightly at the words 'escrima stick'.

Okay, she was an open-minded person, but that was just wrong. She was never using those sticks ever again.

Not without gloves anyway.

"And if you do have sex in the Lair then you clean up when you are done! This," she held up a spray bottle of Clorox Cleanup, "and this," she held up the roll of paper towels, "are to be used whenever you are finished basking in the afterglow; are we clear?! Also, no having sex on my workstation, especially not on the part where I like to set my snacks!"

"What is she talking about?" Oliver asked, turning to Diggle.

"No clue, man," he said shaking his head.

Roy, on the other hand, stood silent; his eyes seeking out the path of least resistance as he plotted out his escape route.

"Felicity, what the hell is going on?" Oliver demanded irritably, "No one has had sex in the Lair." He looked at her wrathful expression and, despite himself, backed up a step, "Recently," he added in a much lower tone.

"Bull. Shit," she spat out causing the other two men to step back as well. "When are you going to learn that I know *everything*, I see *everything*, and I do mean *everything*!" Her voice echoed off the walls causing all of them to cast nervous glances her way.

"Felicity, are you feeling okay?" Diggle asked in a soothing tone.

"Yes!" she bit out, "And don't even try acting like the innocent party here, John Diggle," she warned him. The older man's eyebrows shot up to his hairline and he began to sputter, "Oh no, don't even try to deny it. No one here is innocent of the crime of defiling my place of Zen except for me and the only reason I've let it go this long is because usually you have the common coutesy to keep it on the mats then clean up after yourselves. However, *someone*," she cut her eyes towards Roy, "and I'm not naming names, is going to pick up the spray bleach and kill whatever remnants of DNA are left behind from their little Shadow Shag last night."

"Last night?" Oliver repeated, his eyebrows drawing together in an expression of consternation.

"Shadow Shag?" Diggle echoed, his lips twitching in amusement.

She advanced on the men and Roy, notably, began to skitter backwards, "You will start with my workstation followed by the Wing Chun dummy since we all know what a big baby Oliver can be about that stuff!"

"Wait, someone had sex against my Wing Chun dummy?" He growled.

"Then you will clean the gurney because God only knows what kinds of diseases are now all over that thing," she said bitingly, her eyes now fixed directly on Roy as she clearly gave up on the entire pretense of keeping things on the down low. "I suggest you get tested as well because, I for one, didn't notice any condom wrappers in the trash you again failed to take out last night like you promised!"

"Roy," Oliver said in a low rumble, his fists clenched at his sides.

"I can explain," he said quickly as he held his hands up in supplication.

"And when you're done with *that*," she said, clearly on a roll as Roy's eyes now darted between both her and Oliver who wore identical expressions of near-murderous rage, "you will clean the training mats thoroughly, and I mean *thor-ough-ly*," she spat out each and every syllable in emphasis. "And lastly, you will soak the escrima sticks you used in a 1:10 solution of water, bleach, and detergent after following the highly detailed instructions on the back on the jug!"

"How did you even know about that part?" He burst out in a mixture of awe and humiliation.

"Wait, what? Back up; what is this about the escrima sticks?" Diggle asked doing a double-take. "Boy, I will beat your freaky ass, Mirakuru or no Mirakuru!" He said, going after him, "You better not have been planning on letting me put my bare hands on that shit after you-!"

At that moment, Thea opened the door to the Lair and hurried down the stairs, "What the hell is going on? I could hear you guys yelling over the music even with the soundproofing!"

"What's going on is that you and Roy had sex all over the Lair last night!" Oliver said red-faced as he turned to his sister.

"What?" She asked, taken aback, then chuckled in confusion, "What the hell are you talking about? Roy and I are on a break, remember?"

"Oh shit," Roy said under his breath as he flushed beet red.

"What-?" Her eyes locked on her ex-boyfriend, "You had sex in the Lair with someone last night? Who?" She demanded angrily.

"Yeah, who?" Oliver asked in an icy registry as he folded his arms over his heavily muscled chest.

Roy backed up several more steps, "Um…"

"You didn't," she spat out then turned to Felicity, "Tell me he didn't."

Instead of answering her, Felicity merely bit her bottom lip and looked towards the ceiling.

"You had sex with that French whore after she tried to fucking stab me!" She screeched. "Are you fucking kidding me?!"

"You brought an assassin into the Lair?" Oliver said, stalking after him as he scrambled to hide behind whatever he could use for cover. "An assassin we've been trying to track down for the last couple of weeks unsuccessfully?!"

"On the bright side, I found her so…," he offered weakly. As Oliver stepped over to the weapons case and grabbed his bow, Roy began waving him off frantically, "Hey, wait! Just hold on for a second; technically you brought Sar-!"

"Boy, I suggest you rethink whatever it was you were about to say if you want to get through this without me having to pull an arrow out of your dumb ass!" Diggle warned him before turning to Oliver who was already grabbing for his quiver of arrows and looking towards the younger man like he was a bouncing tennis ball and it was target practice. "Oliver! Put down the bow! You aren't going to shoot Roy!"

"He'll heal," Oliver spat out as he drew back on the bow string.

"Diggle's right!" Thea told him, "You can't shoot him." She reached for her own bow and quiver, "Not until I get a shot at him first!"

"We were on a break!" He said, hiding behind one of the large rolling toolboxes.

"She tried to fucking stab me!" She shot back.

"What the hell is going on down here?" Lance demanded as he walked through the door and headed down the stairs, "Why's everybody tryin' to kill the kid all of the sudden?"

"What are you doing here?" Felicity asked.

"We were going to meet up and discuss the strategy for catchin' that assassin in the weird cat get-up, remember?" The detective said with a scowl.

"Ask Roy since he apparently knows everything there is to know about her! In the biblical sense!" Thea sneered, her eyes flashing. "In fact, here's some strategy; we can just toss some catnip in his pants and just wait for her to come sniffing around his crotch!"

"Okay, what am I missin' here?" He asked, looking towards the rest of the group for answers.

"Roy apparently brought Cheshire down to the Lair and had sex with her last night," Oliver said in a deceptively calm voice.

"What the hell kind of place are you people running here?" Lance asked incredulously, "What is this; a vigilante Lair or some kind of kinky sex dungeon?"

"Don't look at me," Diggle said with a huff, "he's the one using the equipment to do some freaky white people shit. You're just nasty!"

Roy fidgeted slightly under the older man's stern gaze, "Well, um, it was…see, I was getting tired and she hadn't, you know, and it was right there—"

Dig reared back in disgust, "I do not need to hear this crap!"

"I'm just saying, she was kind of into it," he shrugged.

Diggle gave him a look of thunderous outrage, "Okay, you are throwing away whichever one of the sticks you used and buying us a new one and then bleaching the rest like Felicity told you to, understood?"

"I…we kind of used more than one," he said reluctantly. "Actually we used, um, three only I'm not sure which ones are which anymore."

"Three?" Lance asked, turning to him in confusion. "What the hell did you need three for? It was just one girl, right?"

"Um yeah," he said slowly.

He furrowed his brow, "So what were the other two for?"

Roy flushed an even deeper shade of red and shifted uncomfortably.

"Oh hell no, I'm out of here," Diggle said, turning on his heel and marching up the stairs. "Go ahead and shoot him! And you!" He said, stabbing the air with an accusing finger, "You best leave my goddamn equipment alone the next time you feel like getting nasty, you hear me? If I were Oliver, I'd think long and hard before even touching that Wing Chun dummy again! God only knows what you were doing with that thing! I wouldn't be surprised if you wound up getting it pregnant!"

"Wait, what *did* you do to the dummy?" Oliver turned to him suspiciously.

"Um…" Roy said, refusing to meet his eyes as he continued to hide behind the box.

"Something is wrong with you! Getting freaky with a goddamn wooden training dummy-I'm not even religious but, boy, you need to go find Jesus, or Allah, or do something," Diggle said shaking his head and heading back up the stairs, "While you guys are busy putting that freaky motherfucker out of his misery I'm going to be down the street at Big Belly. I need to get some air and maybe find something to wash this taste out of my mouth, shit!"

"Yeah…I'm with him," Lance said quickly chasing after the other man.

Thea advanced on her former boyfriend with dangerous intent, "You're telling me that you let Pussy Galore do that to you and the one time I wanted to try something different and stuck my pinky up your-!"

"Whoa!" Oliver said lowering his bow to throw his sister a dirty look, "I do not need to hear this!"

"Okay," Felicity said, snatching her coat and purse off the back of her chair and grabbing Oliver by the arm. He looked at her in surprise, his expression first tensing then softening although she didn't really notice, all of her attention directed towards his sister instead, "Put down the bow, Thea. You, me, and Oliver are going to go join Diggle and Lance while Roy," she turned her icy gaze towards the man in question, "gets to work down here."

"I have to open the club in less than an hour," she said stubbornly even though she loosened up on the bowstring and lowered it towards the floor.

"Let your assistant manager handle it tonight," she said, again fixing her eyes towards the man in question. "Now put up the bows because we're going to go have dinner."

"Fine," she muttered stomping over to the case to put away first her bow then Oliver's as well, "I cannot believe he would fucking sleep with her after she tried to *stab me*," she grumbled.

"We were on a break," he said meekly.

"Shut up, Roy!" Felicity said, using her Loud Voice and causing him to jump slightly. "Bleach, detergent, hot water! Very, very hot water!"

"Got it," he nodded quickly.

"Speaking of hot water," Oliver said, catching Felicity's hand in his own and gently touching the scald, "are you okay?"

She faltered, her anger suddenly dissipating with the unexpected contact. This was the first time he'd touched her in months. She opened her mouth to speak, gently pulling away from his grip but he held firm, his thumb coasting over the back of her hand.

"Are you okay?" He repeated, his eyes searching hers.

"Um, I…yes," she stuttered.

"It doesn't look all that bad." He let go of her hand reluctantly, "I think there's some burn cream in the first aid kit. Tell Dig to bring it into the restaurant and we'll treat it there."

"Okay, um, come on Thea," Felicity grabbed onto her arm keeping her body between the other woman and Roy in case she decided to lunge for his throat and hurried up the stairs to catch up to Diggle and Lance.

"Shit head," Thea muttered towards him as they passed, still shooting daggers in his direction despite the grip Felicity had on her.

Oliver slowly turned to Roy, a muscle ticking in his cheek as he watched the boy swallow convulsively, "Make sure to do a good job because, when we get back, I'm planting you face first on those mats and then we're doing the sticks. And I guarantee you, when I get ready to plant the flag," he said in a dangerous rumble, "it won't be nearly as much fun as it was last night."

Roy nodded quickly and watched as the man ascending the stairs, "Hey Oliver," he called out, "Pick me up a-!"

The door slammed behind him.

"Burger."

He looked around the now empty foundry and reached for the cleaning caddy with a frown, "How does she always find out about this stuff anyway?"

The End.


End file.
